In the current exhibition on Swedish prehistory at the Swedish History Museum, visitors can observe an extraordinarily emotive Stone Age grave containing the skeletons of a man and a small child. However, the grave was interpreted by the excavators as containing three skeletons. The third skeleton has for some reason been omitted from the exhibition altogether. At the time of the excavation the omitted skeleton was found without the cranium and was placed slightly below the bent legs of the other two skeletons. I argue that the three skeletons, although perhaps representing two burial episodes, should be regarded as relating to one another in a grave assemblage. Instead of presenting the cropped grave assemblage in order to discuss family norms in the past, as is the case in the current exhibition at the museum, we might instead exhibit the assemblage in its entirety as a means to discuss temporal and cultural variations in the attitudes towards "proper" graves, the body and the sacred.
This thesis attempts to understand the relationships between humans and animals in the Middle Neolithic (c. 3300-2300 BC) Pitted Ware culture (PWC) in Eastern Sweden and the Baltic islands of Gotland and Åland. This is accomplished through an examination of the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic clay figurines that have been found on many PWC sites in the study area, and to a lesser extent also the use and deposition of animal bones. The archaeological material is approached using a theoretical framework that draws upon hunter-gatherer relational ontologies and new materialisms.
Comparisons between the anthropomorphic figurines and the zoomorphic figurines reveal clear morphological differences that are not attributable to the bodily differences between humans and animals. Instead, it is argued that they indicate contrasts in human-animal and human-human interactions respectively, and that they also had bearing on the engagements and relationships between humans and figurines. The chronological and geographical distribution of figurines further suggest that the anthropomorphic figurines represent a younger, more localized development in the PWC figurine tradition commencing around 2900 BC. This could possibly also be understood against the backdrop of a general ‘anthropomorphization’ in Europe during the 3rd millennium BC and the wider societal changes in northern Europe.
In contrast to the figurines, which are uncommon in burials and deposits, animal bones have obviously been selectively deposited at many PWC sites. Unmodified animal bones found in certain features, deposits and burials reveal interesting patterns, where bones from the limbs and heads are overrepresented. The parts chosen can be described as those that relate to the perception and movements of the various animals deposited. The treatment of the animal bones might be understood as a way of dealing with a persistent animal awareness that resided in the bones and needed to be controlled.
Zoomorphic figurines and animal bones thus seem to have had complementary uses at the PWC sites and configured human-animal relations in different ways. The figurines might have been involved in influencing prospective prey animals, while the deposition of animal bones was a means of handling animals that had been successfully killed.
At many Middle Neolithic sites in south-central Scandinavia associated with the huntergatherer complex known as the Pitted Ware culture, the skulls of humans and animals seemto have been treated differently from other skeletal elements. This is evident, for example, ininhumation graves lacking crania or entire skulls as well as numerous finds of cranial andmandibular fragments scattered in cultural layers or deposited in hearths and pits. Despiteparallels in overall treatment and find contexts, the selective handling of human skulls hasgenerally been regarded as a mortuary practice and thus qualitatively different from thehandling of animal skulls. Focusing primarily on the head bones themselves and relatingtheir treatment to the wider use of skeletal remains allows us to consider a more complexsystem of retrieving, modifying, curating and depositing crania and mandibles. Drawingon the overlapping general treatment of human and animal remains, it is suggested thathead bones from both humans and animals were efficacious objects that could be used indepositional acts.
During the 2018 excavation of a large Pitted Ware Culture site in Norvik, Nynäshamn, a large number of round-oval ground stone tools with one or more faceted sides were recovered. These probably served as hand stones and were likely used for crushing, pounding and grinding different types of materials. The abundance of these implements at Norvik stands in stark contrast to the apparent lack of them elsewhere, which raises the question of whether this reflects a prehistoric reality or sampling strategies during archaeological excavations. Through our investigation we have identified a comparatively small number of similar stone tools from Pitted Ware Culture sites on the Swedish mainland, Gotland and Åland. It would seem that these tools are somewhat hard to identify in the archaeological record, possibly due to the inconspicuous nature of ground stone tools in general. This might contribute to sampling bias during excavation as well as a tepid interest in doing research on them. We suggest that the inconsistent terminology used for these implements might present an obstacle for future research.